


Hunter's Moon

by RuminantMonk



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Turtle Duck Date Night, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:33:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3657384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuminantMonk/pseuds/RuminantMonk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written after someone asked for my take on Turtle Duck Date Night.  Decided to take the fluffy little trope for a <i>wild, twisty ride</i>.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>They’re walking down the cobblestone promenade downtown, making their way to Harmony Tower.  Finally, it’s Friday evening and Korra couldn’t be happier—she’d been looking forward to date night all week (so much bureaucratic paperwork and dreary diplomatic meetings) and everything is perfect.  The smell of autumn is in the air, the cool, crisp breeze carrying the fresh scent of newly shed leaves. The sky is clear and all the stars are visible, despite the city’s mild light pollution.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter's Moon

“What?  No way, _I’m_ the top kisser, Korra.” 

“Nope.  I am.  Always have been.” 

“But I’m taller!”

Korra takes one glance at Asami’s pouty face and chuckles.  They’re walking down the cobblestone promenade downtown, making their way to Harmony Tower.  Finally, it’s Friday evening and Korra couldn’t be happier—she’d been looking forward to date night all week (so much bureaucratic paperwork and dreary diplomatic meetings) and everything is perfect.  The smell of autumn is in the air, the cool, crisp breeze carrying the fresh scent of newly shed leaves. The sky is clear and all the stars are visible, despite the city’s mild light pollution.

Right now, Asami is arguing that she _must_ be top kisser in their relationship since she’s the tall one.  Korra had only just explained to her the concept of top and bottom kissing: whose lips fit over the other party’s upper lip and whose lips are seal over the bottom?  Maybe a demonstration was in order.

“Check it out,” Korra says.  She stands on her tiptoes and kisses Asami firmly, nipping at her upper lip to further prove her point.  “See?  Top kisser,” she says triumphantly.

“Hmm.” Asami considers her for a moment.  Then, undaunted, she leans forward and plants a kiss on Korra, angling her head so that this time she’s on top. 

When they pull apart— “That was weird,” they say in unison. 

Korra just laughs while Asami shakes her head.

“Fine, okay, you’re right,” she concedes.

“Told you.  I was the top kisser with Mako, too, even though he’s even taller than you.”

Asami takes her by the hand.  Harmony Tower is just a couple more blocks ahead, scattering its brilliant golden light across the reflective surface of the public pond.  The perimeter of the pond is lined with identically pruned trees.  Turtle Duck boats drift lazily on the pond’s calm waters, its passengers mostly made up of lovestruck couples canoodling and cuddling. 

It’s almost saccharine (and _oogie_ ) enough to make Korra gag.  Almost.  But Asami is giddy and holding onto her arm, and … there’s that fluttery feeling in her tummy again (stupid _oogies_ ). 

“Oh, no,” Asami groans.  “Look at that line.”

She’s right—the queue to ride the Turtle Duck boats is ridiculously long, maybe forty people deep. 

“You still want to do this?  We can always come back later,” Korra says. 

“No, it shouldn’t be that bad.  If they’re all paired off, then that cuts down the line down in half.”

“Mm, the power of math.”

They make their way to the back of the line, behind a young man and woman.  At least the view is nice from here—the moon peeking over the golden beams of the tower.  On this particular night, the moon is full and unsettlingly large, glowing an eerie reddish brown.  Against the light of the tower, its unusual color is even more pronounced.

“Hunter’s Moon,” Korra says, pointing over in the distance.  “Look, it’s full and red.”

“I think you mean Blood Moon,” Asami says, her voice teasing. 

Korra crinkles her nose.  “ _Blood_ Moon?  That’s creepy.  We call it Hunter’s Moon down in the South Pole.  Back in the day, hunters and fishermen relied on it for light during nighttime trips.  It’s supposed to bring good luck and a bountiful catch.”

Asami takes her hand, lacing their fingers together.  “Ah, I see.  Probably a regional thing, but the Fire Nation colonies started calling it the Blood Moon after Zhao slayed Tui.  The invasion of the Northern Water Tribe failed and Zhao was killed, so the Blood Moon came to be a symbol of bad luck, portending doom and all that.  But people are so superstitious about everything.”

A chill runs down Korra’s spine.  “Well, supposedly, the moon is now a very nice lady named Yue.  Sokka and Katara told me as much.  I doubt Yue would be all about doom and blood and rage.  …Though I’d be understandably pissed if I were her.”

Before she became the Moon spirit, Yue had been a normal, mortal girl robbed of her life.

Asami tugs at the fur stole around Korra’s neck.  “I forgot you’re superstitious, too.  Who knew the Avatar was scared of ghosts and old wives’ tales?”

“I am not!”

Suddenly, Asami pulls her in close to her face, hands still gripping onto the scarf.

“Hey, could I borrow this?”

Flustered, Korra sputters.  “Y-yeah, of course.”

Asami smiles slyly.  “Good … because _it’s so cold and I can’t get warm!_ ” she says, her eyes narrowing and voice turning high and pinched and spooky. 

Korra tries to shake her off.  “Don’t make fun of me!  That story Katara told us about Nini is _totally_ true.”

Breaking into laughter, Asami bends down and affectionately presses a kiss on her cheek.

“Oh, hey, is that Mako?”  Behind Asami’s shoulder, she can see their friend approaching with a female companion.  Korra waves him over.

They’ve caught him in a rare moment and Korra is trying her best not to tease him—Mako is on a first date with a rather fetching looking woman who, according to him, also worked down at the precinct as the operating manager of the emergency switchboard.  After exchanging a few pleasantries (and awkward pauses), Asami suggests that she and Jin grab the foursome some hot milk teas from the snack stand near the foot of Harmony Tower.

When they’re alone, Korra elbows Mako.

“First date, huh?  Turtle Duck boat ride?  That’s romantic.”

Mako scratches at the back of his head.  “Yeah, but we had dinner before this.  That was my idea.  Coming here afterwards was her idea.”

“Nice, so you guys are hitting it off, then?”

“I think so.”

“Would you say you’re … making a _connection_?”

“Korra, stop.”

“When you asked her out, did she say ‘yes’ right away or did she put you _on hold?_ ”

“Korra, no—“ Mako pinches his brow.

Laughing, she punches him in the shoulder.  “Oh, come on, you were the king of bad puns back when we dated, remember: _looks like you guys should put more ‘try’ in ‘triad.’_ ”

Finally, this gets a smirk out of him.  “Don’t know how you put up with that.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Anyway,” he says, smiling fully. “Let’s just say we didn’t get our _wires crossed_.”

Korra slaps a hand over her face.  “Mako, no …”

Mako cranes his head, looking over her shoulder.  “Speaking of which, I think our dates need some help carrying those drinks.”

At that moment, the line finally starts to move.  He turns to Korra as she steps forward, trailing the couple in front of them.  “Hold our place?  I’ll go help.”

“Sure.”

Korra watches as Mako jogs over to Asami and Jin, taking two of the covered paper cups out of their hands.  They’re still yards away, but are hurrying over as fast as they can without spilling the contents of their drinks.  Her attention is turned back to the couple in front of her (they’re being gross and smooching each other, apparently having decided not to wait for the privacy of a boat).  The line moves just a few steps and Korra follows.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something: a man dressed in all green standing near her friends, pulling something out of his knapsack.  Maybe it’s her Avatar intuition, maybe it’s inordinate amount of spirit vines in this area, but something is wrong and Korra finds herself sprinting toward him, ditching the line completely.

“Mako, stop him!” she screams.  “He has a bomb!”

Mako whirls around and drops the cups.  He runs at full speed and launches himself at the man, catching him in the abdomen and taking him down.  It’s too late: a shiny metal capsule about the size of a goose egg flies through the air.  The crowd scatters, voices screaming, and Korra is still too far away. 

Frantic, she tries metalbending—it doesn’t work.  Her blood runs cold.  It must be platinum.  Just before it lands, she lunges forward and blasts as much air as she can.  The bomb goes throttling back, up high in the air, and then—the world shatters white and burns red.

Seconds later, when Korra comes to, her ears are ringing and she’s sprawled on the ground.  Gravel and chunks of rock scattered everywhere, charred and smoking.  Embers burning red, glowing.  Blood. 

Korra stands up and checks herself: aside from some scrapes and minor burns, she’s unscathed.  There are others still on the asphalt, some of them curled up, some flat on their backs, others getting up slowly, confused.  Just yards away she spots Jin on her knees, coughing and wincing and next to her on the ground— _Asami_.

Korra screams her name, rushing over until she’s kneeling by her side, shouts her name again.  There is blood everywhere and her stomach churns at the sight of a shard of metal embedded deep on the inside of her left thigh. 

As gingerly as she can, she lifts her into her lap and cradles her head.  Asami’s eyes are closed, but she’s breathing.  Frantic, she looks back down to the wound on her leg—she’s losing a lot of blood.  It’s streaming out from around the edges of the shrapnel, flowing down the exposed pale flesh in rivulets.  Asami was wearing black pants that night … she always wears black these days, and right now, the fabric just looks blacker, shows no hint of red except where it’s torn around her skin.  But it’s damp, her clothes soaked through and smearing red all over the blue of Korra’s pants.

She has to stop the blood.  The pool of red under them is expanding quickly, staining deep into the grey asphalt.   Hands shaking, her fingers hover above the jagged piece of metal.

“No, don’t,” a voice rasps behind her.  It’s Jin.  “It’s the only thing stopping her from bleeding out.”

“ _What do I do?_ ” she shouts desperately.  “How do I stop—“

“Korra!”  It’s Mako.  He’s running toward her.  Behind him, several of the Tower’s security guards are holding down the man from earlier. 

“Korra, are you okay?  Are you—is everyone alright?”  His eyes flicker over to Jin, then down to Asami.  He hurries over and kneels at her side. 

After quickly assessing the damage, he looks up at Korra.  “The healers will be here soon.  Luckily, the nearest hospital is only blocks from here … Korra?”

The next few seconds are a blur, but Korra already knows what’s happening.  Bolstered by flames and wind, she’s flying towards the terrorist with the full force of her rage.  Before she knows it, she’s holding a flaming slab of concrete over her head, ready to crush him under it.

She thinks she can hear Mako yelling, shouting at her to stop.  The man cowers under her shadow, she could so easily—

“Korra, _stop!_ ” Mako shouts, his voice breaking.  “Snap out of it!  Asami needs you right now.”

She freezes.  Slowly lowers the concrete.

“I’ll take care of him!  Just, just get over here.  The healers, they’ve—“

When her feet touch the ground, she turns to find a group of men and women dressed in white, lifting Asami’s body onto a stretcher.  Just a few feet away, an ambulance waits, its back doors flung wide open.  She drops the slab with a loud thud and runs over.

Mako places a hand on her shoulder as she watches helplessly as the healers haul the stretcher into the van.  The white of their clothes are already spattered red.

“Go,” Mako says firmly.  “I’ll take care of this.  The police are already here.”

When she’s about to thank him, he gives her a look that tells her she doesn’t need to.  She jumps into the back of the ambulance and the siren goes off.  When one of the men in white inserts an IV needle into Asami’s very pale, very still arm, Korra watches, trying not to cry.

\--

“Femoral artery has been partially severed.”

“She’s losing blood fast.”

“How’re we going to get that metal out?”

“Can’t bend it out; the frag is platinum.”

“But we need to remove it.”

“Even with a tourniquet, it’s too risky.  The blood pressure—“

“She’s already been bleeding for too long.  We take that thing out and it’ll only be a few minutes before exsanguination.”

Korra wants to scream.  She’s pretty sure she isn’t even allowed to be here in the operating room.  It’s been twenty minutes and absolutely nothing has changed: the metal is still there, Asami’s still bleeding, and the healers still don’t know how to help her without _killing_ her. 

The only thing different is that Asami has even less blood in her body than before.

_Korra wants to scream._   Every drop of blood Asami loses she feels acutely, as though it were being wrung out from her own flesh.  All the red—she can barely breathe—blood dribbles out from the edges of the metal soaking the white sheets and padding of the bed. 

One of the healers keeps dabbing at it with gauze, a futile gesture that does nothing to ebb the flow.  Rolled up wads of red-soaked gauze are piling up in a small metal tray under the bed.

“We need to make a decision _now_.”

“You want to go in?”

Even her leg, her bare leg (they long tore off her soaked clothes) is glistening red.  Completely slick with the blood her body won’t stop pumping desperately through the sliced artery.  Korra can’t remember the color of Asami’s skin—peach?  Something pale and delicate.  Anything but dark, deep red …

“It’s the only thing we can do.  Keep the tourniquet tight and get that clamp ready.  The moment I fish it out …”

Thudding in her ears.  Korra’s heart won’t stop its relentless, manic beat.  Every pulse, she can hear every pulse.  The hairs on the back of her neck stand.  Something like static washes over her, prickling cool like fibrous wool brushing over her skin.  Then, hot—liquid heat surging deep through her veins, every capillary, every artery, blood pumped from the chambers of her heart, oxygenating each and every cell into a brilliant, vibrant jewel.  Blood crystallized ruby and garnet, then softening, melting once again into a surging liquid flood.

Somewhere in the room, Korra can hear startled cries, voices shocked and scared.  Voices that don’t matter except the one singing deep in the center of her chest.  She takes a deep breath, then exhales fast and hard. 

The platinum shard flies up—forced out by a burst of blood pressure—and embeds itself into the ceiling with a loud slice.  More voices, this time, screaming.  A fountain of red sprays and arcs in the air, almost beautiful.  Spatters against the walls, rains down on the healers’ white scrubs in messy red drips.

Another breath. The rushing jet of red slows, fat beads of blood floating mid-air as though gravity has been yanked from the room.  Then, the red droplets begin to move again, curving in reverse back into the gaping wound.  Blood puddled near her ankle flows backwards in long streams, returning to the source like a babbling brook going back in time.  The slick coat of blood pulls back, leaving Asami’s skin clean and white, the color of cream once more.

Korra takes another breath.  The last, heavy drop slides back into the open cut.  Digging deep into the reserves of her mind, her psyche painting a detailed picture of the network of veins in her lover’s body, the Avatar searches for a valve.  It takes all of her concentration, but she finds it and wrenches it shut—the ragged mouth of the sliced artery mending and sealing over.

By some miracle, green eyes flicker open, irises locked fast on hers.  And like a slippery river stone falling through wet fingers, Korra feels herself slide out of the Avatar state.  Her knees buckle.  She passes out.

\--

When she comes to, Korra is laying on a hospital bed.  Eyes staring up at the ceiling light, she blinks slowly, trying to remember how she got here.  _Asami_. 

She jolts upright, looking frantically around the room: next to her laying on another hospital bed is Asami.  There’s a needle stuck in her forearm, a tube leading out to a bag filled with blood hanging from a metal stand.  The wound on her thigh is sewn up, stitches holding it closed. 

And though her skin looks a little grey, Asami is awake.

“Hey …” she mumbles.  Asami's voice sounds terrible and thin. Feeble, like a reed.

Korra swings her legs over her bed and walks over to the chair by Asami’s side.  She takes her hand.

“How are you feeling?”

A tiny smile.  “Pretty awful.  And really tired.”

Korra nods.  “You lost _a lot_ of blood.  It was really scary.”

“So I’ve heard …” Asami looks apprehensive, shifts her eyes away from Korra. 

“What is it?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

_Oh_.  “Not really, no.  I fainted, right?”

Asami looks serious, stares her straight in the eye.  “You saved my life.”

“I did?  I think I remember going into the Avatar state, but—”

“You did go into the Avatar state.  You were bloodbending.”

Korra’s eyes go wide. “What?”  She nearly drops Asami’s hand in shock. 

“My artery was severed.  There was nothing they could do.  I was going to die.” She takes a deep breath.  “Then you fixed it.  Stopped the bleeding.  Healed the artery, somehow.”

“I can’t believe it.  I’ve never—” She shakes her head, dazed.  “Are you _okay?_ ”  She has to ask, needs to make sure.

Asami tries to sit up, smiling weakly.  “Did you hear what I said?  _You saved my life_.”

Korra shushes her and squeezes her hand.  “I’m just so glad you’re alright.  For a second, I really thought—“ Her lip trembles.

“Now you know what it’s like to date you.” Asami blinks slow and heavy, like it hurts to keep her eyes open.  She must be exhausted.  “Everyone trying to take you away from me all the time …”

Korra smooths the hair back from her forehead.  Tired eyes drift shut and Asami succumbs to sleep.  Through the small window by the bed, Korra can see the full moon hovering ominously in the sky, still holding onto its rust-colored hue. 

Later, she asked Asami what it felt like for her, to be bloodbent.  With a faraway look in her eyes, Asami recounted the moment like a dream: as though bright, warm light had flooded every chamber of her fading heart, then, like hot lightning, the sensation of fingers traveling through her veins, searching, feeling, then exiting her body—the shock of longing that followed, leaving her cold and empty and bare … then, very suddenly, a fullness that throbbed and pulsed and taught every cell in her bloodstream how to move again.  Like a powerful flood rushing back through the banks of a dry river after a drought.  A return to herself, just whole and breathing and alive.

\--

Two months later and the man behind the Harmony Tower attack is behind bars.  A former Earth Empire loyalist, he’d been one of Baatar Jr.’s right hand men: a knowledgeable engineer in the weapons department.  After the Empire’s fall, his mind had snapped, taking the dregs of his ruined life with it.  Taking down Harmony Tower was meant to be his swan song. 

Thankfully, though a few innocent bystanders received severe third degree burns, with one security guard losing three of his fingers in the blast, no one died that night.

As for Asami, she’s mostly recovered, save a slight limp in her left leg that the healers say will go away with some physical therapy and time.

Tonight, they’re back at the Turtle Duck Pond—it’s finally re-opened this weekend after the attack.  It was Asami’s idea to return, reasoning that they’d never even gotten to ride one of the boats.  And though the idea shakes Korra to the core, she finds that she can’t say no.

The moon is full once more, floating bright and white in the black canvas of the night sky.  Korra steers the boat slowly around the pond, her eyes riveted by the way the moon and the stars and the golden city lights ripple and break in their path. 

At her side, Asami tugs gently at her arm.  Ever attuned, she can tell she’s preoccupied.  The worry is showing on her face, Asami says, but she shouldn’t worry. 

_ I feel safe.  _

And with Asami curled warm and soft in her arms, Korra finally relaxes.  Breathes easy and smiles when Asami’s head presses gently into her chest and she hears her say:

_ I’m here and I can hear your heart beating. _

**Author's Note:**

> SURPRISE! I couldn't help but take layers of candyfloss fluff and wrap it round and round a sharp, gum-piercing core. I've never really written violence, horror, or gore before, so I set out to try. The idea of helpful bloodbending didn't come to me until later. I like the concept now, taking one of the most extreme forms of violent bending used primarily to violate and bend others to their will ... and upending it to show how connected two people can be. Because the crazy thing about bloodbending, I think, is that it shows how deep you're willing to go inside another person's body and spirit, albeit for negative reasons (to know is to control, manipulate). Spin it positively and maybe it can be symbolic of love. Maybe.
> 
> Anyway, prompts always welcome on my [tumblr.](http://ruminantmonk.tumblr.com)


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